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The Legacy
In the culture of House Serpens, the Legacy refers to three distinct aspects of a method devised in the ancient past to preserve and expand on the Serpens’ expertise in psionics. The Living Legacy The Living Legacy is a psionic construct; an amalgamation of knowledge and memories held in the mind of a single individual from House Serpens, chosen from among their nobility by the previous host. Each host adds new information to the Living Legacy along with their memories before passing it on at the end of their life by means of a telepathic technique known only to Legacy themself. When it was first created, the construct was a perfect repository of knowledge which blended seamlessly into the long-term memory of its host as though they had lived a single life stretching back to the earliest days of the Empire. Since the Scream and the recovery of the construct, however, the Living Legacy has become fractured. While most of the practical knowledge was maintained and remains accessible, the memories of the previous hosts are far less reliable. One modern host described the experience like standing in the middle of one of Hroa’s lightning storms; memories come in flashes and myriad voices seem to converse just out of earshot, like the constant susurrous sound of wind. Legacy The current host of the Living Legacy is referred to simply as Legacy. They spend their life in relative isolation, attended by a few, if any servants. Legacy has few duties, though their role in Serpens society is held in the highest regard. In addition to safeguarding the Living Legacy itself, Legacy is expected to devote their life to academic pursuits to add to the depth of knowledge of the construct and to use their unique perspective to break new ground, especially in the realms of psionic training and general psionic theory. Anything produced by Legacy they believe could have immediate or short-term practical application is sent to the Academy or to the Takumi in Ophai for development and implementation, while long-term projects are pursued alone, perhaps to be completed by the next Legacy. Legacy is also expected to serve as an advisor to all of Serpens, though this counsel is not meant to come easily. Legacy resides in a remote mountain complex near Sero’ak, the journey to which is dangerous and difficult by design. This not only protects the Living Legacy, but ensures those that seek Legacy out do not do so idly; only the dedicated can hear the wisdom they have to offer. The effect of receiving the Living Legacy on a host is profound. The few pre-Scream accounts that exist from first-hand sources that interacted with Golden Age Legacies describe them as “possessed of inexhaustible patience, unshakable composure, and inescapable insight.” The perspective of multiple lifetimes is said to have imbued them with a certain serenity; that they looked at others like a grandparent watching a toddler. Modern Legacy accounts, while abundant, are far less consistent. The damage to the Living Legacy during the Scream seems to have made the memory portion of the construct far less harmonious. Those that have encountered a modern Legacy sometimes describe them as capricious, speaking with strange, shifting affects and seeming to hold conversations with themselves, Others describe them as aloof to an otherworldly extent, as though they weren’t speaking to another human. One account described the host as speaking only with plural pronouns and using their telepathy to speak with a chorus of voices in unison. The Written Legacy The Written Legacy is a text, part journal and part manual, started by the first Legacy and added on to by each host. It serves as a failsafe against the Living Legacy’s host dying without a successor. While mostly devoted to practical knowledge, it does contain some personal thoughts of previous Legacies on subjects from daily life to philosophy. While the Written Legacy may only be viewed by the current Legacy or their chosen heir, much of its content, especially those written by the first few hosts, has been made public to the academic community of House Serpens. In fact, many of the training methods used in the Academy today were first documented in the Written Legacy. Category:House Serpens